Cool. Do you want me to leave this one? Sure. Why not? Okay. Boop, boop, boop. Welcome back to the My Latin Life podcast. Since 2014, My Latin Life has been your trusted guide to traveling and living in Latin America. Today, we have back a repeat guest, John Richardson, expatriation law. He's an expert in the issues that impact Americans living abroad, specifically, taxation of Americans abroad. John, welcome to the podcast. How's it going? Pretty well. Pretty well. Yeah. We haven't talked for, I don't want a half a year or something. Yeah. I think this is the fourth one, maybe the third, maybe the fourth. Yeah. We get back together because there's been some recent developments with an organization that you are a part of. The acronym is SCAT, which is the Stop Extra, let me do this again, the Stop Extra Territorial American Taxation Organization, SEAT, SCAT, and you guys basically advocate for eliminating or changing the extraterritorial taxation laws that impact American citizens and citizenship-based taxation. Tell us about the latest developments there. Yeah. Well, you may get some more comprehensive than it is. As you know, the U.S. employs the citizenship taxation model. It means that any U.S. citizen, even if they don't live in the United States, it's subject to the U.S. extraterritorial regime that includes taxation. And the mission of SEAT has been to A, provide education on the problems of it and B, to get it changed, meaning to eliminate citizenship as a criterion for U.S. tax residency. And the good news is that our Republicans overseas has seen the wisdom on that, actually have seen the wisdom for many years, and is advocating that position. In other words, no more taxing U.S. citizens, wherever they live in the world, just because of their citizenship. And I didn't read the full thing, but it's like you're trying to present before Congress or there's, it's picking up steam in some way. Tell us about that. Well, okay. Now, SEAT is a relatively new organization, I think it was formed about four years ago, but the Republican Party has been around forever, and Republicans overseas has been around for a long time, and Republicans overseas, although it's not widely known, which I think is a mistake, has been very, very active in advocating, getting rid of the problems associated with citizenship taxation. For example, in 2014, they launched the first lawsuit against FACA in the United States, it was called Stop FACA, whatever it was called. Interestingly, it was dismissed for standing issues, very, very difficult to sue U.S. government. Every time you see them, their first response will be, "Well, you don't have the right to sue us." In 2017, there were house hearings into FACA, and Republicans overseas, well, actually did manage to organize that and played a lead role. In 2018, Republicans overseas played a major, major role in representative holdings bill to at least improve the situation of citizenship taxation, and after the election there, it's going to be major tax change in the U.S. for no other reason, but a lot of the 2017 tax jobs and cuts act, provisions will be expiring. This is a good opportunity to advance the cause of ending this citizenship tax regime. That's exactly what they're doing. Specifically, the Heritage Foundation is sort of collecting and consolidating proposals, and this is one of them. What do you think is the legit chance that we can actually see some change here? One thing is to advocate for it. I'm sure lots of Americans living abroad would love to see some change. What's the chance we actually see something happen? Has there been any whispering among the American government that they're willing to mix things up here? Well, among the American government, what do you mean by that? You mean Congress, you mean Treasury, you mean Ways and Means Committee, you mean Senate finance. It's like the U.S. government is a bunch of ants, right? Well, I'm sure it's going to be a coordination between various departments, right? Where would it start, I guess? Well, so there's three ways to attack the problem of citizenship taxation. The RO proposal incorporates all three. The first is a legislative proposal, and the legislative proposal is simple in theory, and right now the internal revenue code says every individual is subject to a U.S. worldwide taxation unless you can prove you're a non-resident alien, and that's fairly broad. So first, the congressional fix would be to change that to every U.S. resident is subject to worldwide taxation. MM involves various changes to the internal revenue code, obviously, so that's the legislative fix. Also, most of these tax laws don't even come from the internal revenue code, they come from Treasury regulations because a section of the internal revenue code would typically give Treasury, that is the IRS, the authorization to make a regulation. So this can also be fixed through a regulatory fix. Right now, the relevant regulation defines individual to be a citizen or a resident. And our view is that the regulation could simply define individual to be a resident. And about four years ago, along with other seating members, Karen Alpert and Laura Snyder, I wrote a paper called regulatory fix for citizenship taxation, which explores all this. And I mean, it's widely available online as long as you look for it. So that would be the second one. And the third aspect of this is to take the position that this can be changed through tax treaties by eliminating or not applying what's called the saving clause to Americans abroad. The saving clause is a provision of all U.S. tax treaties that incredibly say that hey, you know, yeah, there may be benefits to this tax treaty, but U.S. citizens are deprived of most of the benefits. So interestingly, many tax preparers will say to you, well, you know, the treaty prevents double taxation. I mean, you know, that is an absolutely outrageous distortion of reality because as a general principle, the saving clause means that U.S. citizens don't get the benefit of treaties. So if anything, the treaties tend to reinforce double taxation. But fortunately, it's the internal revenue code that has the foreign tax credit provisions and things like that. So, you know, it's really this proposal is attacking this problem in all three of these ways. You know, what are the chances? Well, you know, one can never know what the chances are. I mean, you just rule this stuff out and do what you can with it. And has anyone like any congressman picked up your cause a little bit and said, like, yeah, this, this makes sense. Well, various Congress people, men, whatever have actually coincidentally men. Yes. But people over the years have at the present time, for example, Senator or Congress and buyer, Virginia has his own sort of proposed legislation, doesn't go far enough. But the point is that that's somebody who recognizes this is a clear problem. You know, before is retirement, Congress on holding recognized this is a clear problem. So there are members of Congress who do recognize this problem. And it becomes a question, I think, of, you know, generally raising awareness with them et cetera. But, you know, I understand this that it's very likely that 2025 will be another year of massive, massive tax reform that doesn't happen very often. So, you know, you're going to see all kinds of proposals in the mix. So it's not like this is going to be considered, I think, as a standalone bill or thing, right? I mean, it's going to be part of the, you know, the general, the general tax reforms that are considered. Okay. Okay. And I understand there's a group called Republicans overseas that are involved. I've heard that the Democrats overseas or whatever they're called is like significantly bigger. Are we seeing sort of bipartisan support for this or is this a very Republican led charge? Well, let's unpack what you said there. So Democrats abroad and getting even more granular, the Democrats abroad tax committee are subset, you know, it's a subset of the Democratic Party generally would be a small, very small part of it. And you know, Republican Party has Republicans overseas, which is definitely a smaller organization. And they have their own sort of tax committee as well, right? Because we were Republicans overseas tax committee, Democrats abroad tax committee. I would say that obviously, but one fact, anybody, including individuals would be committed to the view that this whole, you know, US citizenship taxation thing is a big, big problem. As it currently stands though, and then there are various ideas for how to solve this as a problem. Now, the basic problem here is although the way US citizens abroad are taxed by the US government, which is very punitive, generally and far worse than the way residents Americans are taxed, is not actually the problem, okay? It's an expression or a feature of a problem where consequence of the problem, the problem is that Americans abroad, meaning US citizens who don't live in the United States, the real problem is they're subject to US tax jurisdiction at all, okay? Like why should somebody who doesn't live in the United States be subject to the rules in the internal revenue code, they don't live in the United States, right? So my view and seats view and the view of Republicans overseas is that you solve a problem by changing law or the regulations so that individual US citizens who do not live in the United States are no longer subject to the internal revenue code, right? Which we use the cluster of words severing citizenship from tax residency. Now, that is the goal every Republicans overseas, you know, generally in the Tax Committee in particular, so we compare that to Democrats abroad, that does not appear to be their immediate goal, right? Or at least they're not articulating in that way of severing citizenship from tax residency, or at least that's not an immediate goal, their work seems to be focused more around not ending the fact that individual US citizens are subject to the internal revenue code at all, but trying to make their way their subject to the internal revenue code a little bit better, right? In other words, you know, examples might be, you know, increase the foreigner and income exclusion or, you know, reduce the number of forms they should file or something like that, right? But I think that generally, and I'm not being critical of anything here, I'm just answering your question the way I see it, because I do think ultimately it's very important, you know, to get a union in any among individuals abroad in their groups, but at the present time, you know, I think really it's only seen Republicans overseas that are kind of, you know, trying to extract the cancerous tumor, namely, you know, US, you know, get sever citizenship from tax residency, citizenship have nothing to do with this, right? As opposed to, well, you know, we're stuck with citizenship taxation, it's the American way. Let's just try to make it a little more tolerable for people. Does that make sense to you? It does. And I think there's kind of in one way, two groups of Americans. And I noticed that the, the seat organization seems to be basically people who have been living abroad their full lives. So someone who was maybe born in France to American parents or born in Australia to American parents. And so for them, they feel, I guess, further away from the United States. And then it's a whole different thing, people who are maybe who grew up in the US and now they're living abroad and they're living in Mexico, but they really kind of grew up in the US. And it seems like a lot of the, the people who are pushing this initiative or people who literally have lived their whole lives more or less outside the US, and they just happen to have the passport from their parents. And they're like, what the hell is going on? This is, this is really unfair. Is that accurate? I think you're definitely on the right track there. Let me sort of rain that in a little bit. I don't think you're wrong, but I think that it's more of the consequences of the circumstances you're describing. So if you have, I mean, you know, obviously somebody who's never lived in the United States or you have somebody who's lived their full adult life outside of the United States, what you have are people where their whole financial center of gravity, earning investments, retirement planning would be in accordance with the laws of another country, right? I mean, you grew up in France, you grew up in Canada, the UK, what have you, you know, you're going to be saying about things like Canadian TFSA, UK ISA, you know, this sort of stuff, right? And, you know, pension plans, I mean, if you have a pension plan or some kind of employee benefits thing, I mean, it's going to be tied into, you know, a non, a non-US employer. Now, for those people, because their financial center of gravity is completely outside the United States, they are affected incredibly negatively by a US tax code that is just so hostile to anything that is non-US, so hostile to me, anything that's foreign, I mean, you know, like a, you know, for those people that I've described, you know, my God, if they try to be self-employed or have a business abroad, I mean, you know, the consequences are, you know, are simply unbelievable. Now, on the other side, you know, we talk about, you know, the digital, no-man type person, you know, which I think what you mean by the Mexico thing, and others, the dividing line is that, and we've talked about this before, right, that those kinds of people, their financial center of gravity tends to be in the United States, right? I mean, they may be outside the United States temporarily or what have you, but they run their financial life more through the United States, so they don't feel the effects of this in the same way. I mean, either way, you know, it's, there's a moral aspect of this, and, you know, it's completely wrong, you know, for the United States to be reaching into other countries, you know, and trying to claim people's tax residence. But in terms of the feeling of pain, I would say, yeah, the dividing line really is where their center of financial gravity is, and if your center of financial gravity is outside the United States, and those tend to be the people who you describe as, you know, living outside the United States for their whole lives, the pain is going to be a lot worse. And, you know, I think the, you know, the perceived outrageousness of it is going to be a lot higher, but, but, you know, Vance, your very question, I think, reveals a real problem here, and that is to, you know, and that is to get a sort of a unified support for getting rid of these problems, right? Now, remember that something like Democrats abroad is a U.S. center of organization, right? Even though it's called abroad, I mean, the purpose of it is essentially, you know, to, you know, martial voting, you know, from outside the United States, et cetera. So there, you know, membership is largely going to be people who, you know, still have connections to the United States, you know, if they're temporarily outside the United States, they're clearly their financial center of gravity, their retirement planning is in the United States. That's not a good group to, you know, really represent the interests of people who've lived long term outside the United States. Yeah, definitely. I mean, because as you mentioned, if you just live a life 100% separate from the United States, you're in your financial center of life, is France or Australia, and you get a local job in France or Australia, and you hold your money in France or Australia, it have businesses there, it's insanely complicated. Well, it is, because, you know, I think another problem on this whole discussion is that I have gradually seen the obvious, sometimes the obvious is the hardest to see in life. But you know, tax codes in the modern world are only peripherally about taxation. You know, if you have a simple tax system, like say, air a trail, and say, well, you know, just give us a 2% excise tax on your income, you know, people wouldn't like it but there wouldn't be, you know, the degree of despair over this thing. The problem is that in the first world democracies, tax codes are not mainly about tax. They're about rewarding a certain kind of lifestyle, right? You know, a certain same for retirement or, you know, or this or that. So the problem we even call the citizenship taxation regime is that it's not really about taxation, it's about, you know, being subject to a set of life rules imposed by a country that you don't even live in, right? And you know, that's really, that's really what makes it impossible. And you know, so to put another way, the people who see this is just a tax issue, obviously don't understand what a real yes. And what would be the ideal outcome here from what your organization is trying to do and this idea of, I guess, repealing or removing extra territorial taxation, what's the best case scenario? Well, there's only one case scenario that really solves the problem for all people, all the time, under all circumstances, and that is to completely sever citizenship from a definite definition of US tax residency. In other words, you know, one citizenship, you know, the fact that one was born in the United States is irrelevant to taxation that it needs to shift over to a tax definition of residency based, well, just based on that residency, you know, do you have a physical financial connection in the United States that would justify a US claim, the ought to be subject to their, you know, their worldwide taxation or a scene. But I mean, there's something, you know, strange or revolutionary about that. I mean, that just means the United States joins exactly what the rest of the world standard is. I mean, at present time, the rest of the world defines tax residency, how shall I put it in terms of the circumstances of your life, the United States, by using citizenship to find tax residency in terms of the circumstances of your birth, I mean, you know, I remember once President Obama, you know, making this claim, you know, basically the outcome of your life shouldn't, you know, should never be determined by the circumstances of your birth. Right? I mean, oh my God, what kind of nonsense is this? I mean, that's the whole basis of the US tax system. So bottom line, you know, the outcome is just for the US to behave like the rest of the world, which they should, because of, you know, all the mobility, you know, from one place to another. And assume tax jurisdiction based on the circumstance of people's lives, how, you know, how they live their lives, and not based on the circumstance of their birth. Well, I was born a US citizen, therefore I'm always subject to these laws, right? I mean, it's almost as though it's come full circle because a big part of the, you know, the people they even forgotten that there was a war of 1812 between the United States and Britain. I mean, the issue was very much the same and that Britain was claiming a US residence as British citizens and, you know, forcing them to serve on British warships. And I guess if we were to get our way and have citizenship divorced from taxation, they'd have to put in a set of laws in terms of how someone, you know, what makes someone a tax resident and how someone could give up tax residency. Are you providing guidelines for that? Are you taking cues from? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. In general sense, you know, in your first point, you know, what does it mean to be a tax resident? Well, you know, I did a podcast, another podcast this morning with somebody and I sort of coined the phrase, you know, what's that movie, Fifty Shades of Grey or any of the call, I called it Fifty Shades of Tax Residency, you know, what can that mean? And typically the way tax residency is defined, although countries are not identical, you know, we can use Canada as an example, I think you know, Canada, right? It's a combination of, you know, what's called deemed. I don't care what your life is, you're going to be a tax resident. If you spend more than a certain number of days in a country, most countries have that and Canada's 183 days in the US, you have, you know, what's called a substantial presence test. And then you have something that's a little more not as mechanical, but more substantive, which really has a deal with, hey, you know, where do you really live your life? Canada calls that ordinary residence, you know, which is sort of, you know, where's your family, where's your jobs, this sort of stuff, right? So you know, something like that, I mean, I think that probably are proposed, well, because I've written them, you know, are based more on something like Canada's ordinary residency. It's something that, you know, I understand of a lot of experience with. So yeah, you know, the basic proposal would be something like that, right? Something closer to the Canadian system or the Australian system. And in the world that stands today, unfortunately, more and more countries are adopting departure taxes. So I think you're aware, only you sell your tax residency. Yeah, I mean, it's called next to tax in the US. Other countries call them departure taxes, but it's a tax imposed at the time of severing tax residency. And I would expect that a proposal like this would include a provision like that because, you know, the, the man objection would be, all right, so you're telling me that some billionaire can just move outside the country, I mean, this is the first thing they'll always say. This used to be a US tax resident, the answer is, I don't know, absolutely not. You know, as in countries like Canada, Australia, they would pay a departure tax at that time when they move out, you know, which is usually includes sort of a deemed sale capital gains tax. I mean, the US has something similar at the moment, although far more punitive, but because the US defined citizens in terms of, sorry, tax residency in terms of citizenship, what happens is the taxes trigger when people lose their citizenship, which can be years after they've left the United States. So the US 877A exit tax typically goes after assets that were accumulated when somebody didn't even live in the United States. So a move to residency based taxation would also align these kinds of departure taxes. A much better, okay, with increase in asset value when the person actually lived in country instead of outside the country. And how can someone get involved if they want to be part of the advocating and making this happen? Well, so I would say that seat at seatnow.org is sort of the, you know, the group that puts together the, you know, the background thing in organizing this, and you can follow us at seatnow.org. We made a decision creating the organization to not accept donations actually, you know, just thinking that it would be easier. And of course, you know, I mean, I'm not promoting any particular political party, but I would point out that it's the Republican Party and Republicans overseas that is, you know, that is really going for the jugular and taking the position that, you know, citizenship needs to be severed from tax residency. Now, I know a lot of your group is on Twitter. So I'll give you some Twitter handles, you know, to keep up with this. And of course, follow me, ex-patriation law on Twitter, e-x-p-a-t-r-i-a-t-i-o-n law. You can follow a seat on Twitter, seatnow_org, S-E-A-T-N-O-W_O-R-G. You can follow Republicans overseas tax, R-E-P overseas, T-A-X. I would actually encourage you to follow Democrats abroad tax to see what they're doing as well. Although I know quite the same thing, but they're Dems abroad tax, you know, so those are good ways to, you know, follow what's going on. Now, in terms of getting involved, I think there are a lot of small things that can be done. You know, one of them is from time to time, you know, there are calls for people to complete surveys right now, seatnow, is conducting a major, major survey that you can find in the seatnow.org site, I encourage you to complete that. But sometimes there are calls for, you know, submissions to U.S. Treasury, for example. And those are also very important. And there's a major one having to do the foreign trust rules, which is just closed. But, you know, on August 21st, I mean, I actually will be in D.C. making a presentation, you know, to treasury on the unfairness of a lot of these rules. But you know, I mean, I can do that, right? Or somebody else can do it, but I can tell you it's a hell of a lot easier at the moment there are 1500 Americans abroad. And by the way, head tip to Democrat 1500 organizing this, you know, who submitted comments to treasury. So it means a lot easier for me or somebody else, or by the way, you know, I didn't invent this. You know, you've got 1600 comments in total and 1500 of them are from Americans abroad. So I mean, these are these are things that can and should be done. Ultimately, I do believe that, you know, this change will be successful. Well, maybe not right now, but it will be successful. But the necessary condition for success is for individuals and groups to get behind the goal, the goal that really matters, which is to sever citizenship from the U.S. definition of tax resins. In other words, people shouldn't be taxed because of the circumstances of their birth. Are you kidding me? You're born in the United States, therefore, the rest of your life that you have some claim on you? No, people should be taxed based on the circumstances of their life. You know, do they, you know, have the kind of physical connection, whatever, you know, the United States that would justify a taxation. I'm sure there's a general principle Barack Obama would agree with that. My guess is that when it came to taxation, say, Oh, well, well, that's somehow different. Well, no, it's not different. Okay. I mean, you know, you just don't like the result of it, you know, in one particular case, right? Mm hmm. And so we have one proposal that's sort of working its way through the system. Where exactly is it at right now? When you say where it's at, do you mean what has been done or do you mean where to find it or what do you mean? I mean, I'll answer both. Yeah. Yeah. I guess a little bit of everything. You know, there's, it's pretty clear that 2025 is going to be a major year for tax reform and the heritage group is very active in, you know, putting out of their proposals for what that tax reform should be. And Republicans overseas has taken this proposal and got it in along with that group of thing. And this is the group that, you know, it's working hard to, you know, provide the blue prints, the changes for either a new Republican administration or, you know, their two cents worth whatever for any administration. And, you know, I know that, I mean, I don't want to get into the politics of this, okay, but I mean, it seems fairly clear that there's a reasonable chance at least that, you know, the Republicans are going to win the next election. Okay. Mm hmm. It's not guaranteed, but anybody who would discount it, you know, I think it's severely disconnected from reality, right? Maybe they don't. But, you know, so this is important, you know, so it's in there. Now, in terms of where to find it, if you were to go to Republicans overseas.com and fish around there a little bit, you will find it. The exact proposal or if you were to go to the Twitter handle, rep overseas tax, you will find it. Okay, just by kind of looking around there. Awesome. And what's the, what's the next step for the proposal? Well, what was the next step for the proposal? Well, I mean, the proposal's in. I mean, I guess the next step would be, you know, responding, you know, A, improving it internally, you know, B, responding to, you know, any queries from, you know, here to anybody else. I mean, there are two additional things that I personally think are important. So I moved to residency based taxation and I wanted to find that as severing citizenship from tax residency. And by the way, abolishing fact, or in the 2016 platform of the Republican Party, 2020, they didn't change the platform, so it remained in there. I do not know whether it is, and I'm not sure there is a final Republican platform for 2024. And what the status of it is. But the first point is that I think it's important that those two things, the repeal of citizenship taxation, in fact, are remaining in the party platform. I think, you know, I think that's an important thing. The second thing though, and this is my idea, so I'm, I don't, I mentioned it only because I don't want to tag Republicans overseas with this idea unless they breathe. But you know, my view of this is that because so much of this can be changed by regulation, that I think that individual Americans abroad through Republicans overseas ought to work towards getting a commitment from an incoming administration, which is technical law, or if Trump wins the election, okay, that he would appoint a treasury secretary who would commit to making these changes through regulation. In other words, maybe we can't get the law changed, but, okay, clearly we know the treasury because they already have, right? It's their view, they have the regulatory authority to define individual. So we would look for a commitment from a Republican president to appoint a treasury secretary that would define individual through regulation as resident and not citizenship, right? So I think those are two additional things that, you know, probably would strengthen the cause here. But again, those two things are, those are John Richardson thoughts on a Wednesday after they're not, you know, as far as I can see, you know, any, any thoughts adopted by a Republican overseas tax group. Yeah. No, I get it. I get it. And I imagine really like every big country has some sort of organization for Americans abroad, right? There's probably Americans and Australia, Americans and France. Are you kind of, are you guys kind of going around to all these different organizations and trying to get them on board? Well, the first hand, the answer to your first question is, yeah. Okay. I've got to tell you, I think Democrats abroad is much more organized than that. And they, you know, they have their own, you know, they have Democrats for Australia, Democrats for Canada, and they try to do that. But they're not, and I think they should, you know, commit to the goal of severing citizenship from tax residency, my understanding is that the moment that's at best a long term goal. Okay. Not, you know, a current goal, which, you know, I personally think it's a mistake. But yeah, they're doing that. And the, the approach of Republicans overseas is similar, you know, they, they have chapter leaders and different copies, et cetera. So, I mean, the idea is, you know, here's the proposal that we're trying to work with a sort of downloading that proposal through the world, right, through the various chapter leaders. But yeah, I mean, if you go at every major expat organization on board, that would be, you know, that would be representing millions of people. You know, the answer, I agree with you, but, but the interesting thing about this is, and I really hate to say this, but at the present time, you know, it's only seat and Republican overseas tax that is going for the jugular, trying to remove the cancerous tumor citizenship taxation. You know, these other groups are, you know, just trying to make it better. And you know, we're hoping that by articulating a very clear and specific vision here that, you know, we can sell this to individuals who will understand the logic of this and gradually, you know, bring everybody into alignment with this is the goal. Because I agree with you, at least I think what I heard you imply, was that a, you need support, you need support for a clearly defined goal, right? And at the present time, I, you know, I think that individual Americans have brought her very, very divided on this, you know, I mean, there's a whole range of ideas. Some of them don't care at all. Some of them believe in citizenship taxation. Some of them are unhappy with it because they have a specific problem. If they get their problem solved, they don't care about anything else. You know, I mean, of your group, digital nomads, let me ask you, I mean, what would be very out of tea towards this? Right now, I mean, I think a lot of them are benefiting big time from the existing system, right? The foreigner and income exclusion that I think everyone would be down. I mean, I, I still think everyone would be down. I mean, the FEIE is, is good, but it's no, it's not nearly as good as being able to just switch your tax residency, like Canadians and Europeans. Yeah. Well, that's good to hear. I mean, because I think that, you know, this is a large, you know, constituency of, you know, I think generally younger people, you know, it's a, but I mean, you know, citizenship taxation is absolutely idiotic and cannot benefit the world, right? But because a lot of people who live their whole life under the US tax system, there's a group of people who think they'd be damaged by a change, right? And any change, you know, is perceived to affect some people negatively. So for example, you know, you get, oh, you know, I mean, we've talked about this before, right, but you know, people who work their whole life in the US, they're so secure to maybe a pension, they decide that, you know, they have trouble living in the United States on that level of income. So they move outside the United States somewhere, you know, they're very much threatened by the idea of changing the tax system in this way, because they're afraid that, you know, that because they weren't in the United States, they'd be treated as non-resident aliens and therefore of higher taxes on their income, right? So it's not that they think the citizenship taxation is a good thing. It's that they're afraid of a change to the existing taxes in that particular stage in their life, right? So, you know, it's tough and you've also got, you know, I mean, this stuff is hugely complex. I mean, even the people who know a lot about it, I think, are nothing but students of it, right? It's so complicated. The problem is just that the US isn't really doing much in terms of zapping laws and deleting laws. Like Elon Musk has kind of been advocating for this just like we need to start deleting laws. And that really hasn't started that the movement of just deleting laws, which would be great. So that's absolutely right, man. That's absolutely right. And that's particularly true in the area of tax law, right? You know, we have all these duplicated laws. The US is a country, they love their laws. The more the better, the older the better, the more outrageous the better. Because somehow, you know, the outrageousness, the length of these things, prove the enduring viability of a country that's strangled itself by too many laws and regulations. I mean, it is a very bad situation in the United States and leaving aside the tax laws. I think it's the sheer volume of laws, regulations. I think it basically strangled the country. I mean, you've got a system where, I mean, you know, part of the problem, I'm going back to the tax thing for a minute, is that nobody even knows what they're required to do. Yeah. You know, what you have is, you know, to navigate the US taxes, unless they'll be confronted with a system where, you know, the penalty is very, very certain that you're going to get a major penalty. But for what, nobody can figure it out. So, you know, it's a terrible system of certain, of definite penalties for indefinite or indefinite conduct, right? And you know, I mean, what do you do about it? I mean, I think that there's the problem with too many laws, but there's also the problem of the way laws are me. You know, I do not think that I don't think that I think we need to get rid of omnibus bills, right? I mean, so many of these tax laws come in as, you know, part of a broader bill. That's the first thing. So, you know, congressmen don't even know what's in them, right? If you're getting stopped out the pages of laws, they don't know what's in this stuff, obviously. You know, they just sort of sign off on it. But the thing that's most criminal about this, I'm going to use the word criminal is this, but I'm going to ask you a question before I give you this example. Do you think that people ought to know what a law says in terms of what people are required to do? That would be a desirable feature. I don't think I understand the question. Do you think that if somebody passes a law, you ought to be able to understand what the laws is telling you you have to do or prohibiting you from doing? It's certainly all too complicated. I mean... Okay. So, the way they make the laws right is that they never include, what they do is they say, well, we're going to amend this law, we're going to take out this word and add this word in this section. But what they never show you is what the result of the amendment is, right? There's never a clear statement. And by the way, after all these change have been made, here's how the law will read. They don't do this. And I believe, you know, the bottom of my heart, okay, that this is absolutely immoral. And then any time... Right. It's almost like they're committing code, but then they're not testing the final product. That's a good way to see if the new code, if there's still no bottoms and if the website's working properly. Yeah. That's exactly right. And, you know, something like the internal revenue code is like a website from the '90s. That's recommended, you know, for 30 years, it doesn't work and you can't... That is... Yeah, John, this is kind of all we have time for today. We actually went a couple of minutes over because I know you're a rancor as well. I know we just got to cut it short now, otherwise... But in any case, people will have to get in touch with you. You know, we talked about how things are super, super complicated. If you are a digital nomad looking to take advantage of the foreigner and income exclusion, you have a relatively simple case, feel free to get in touch with my Latin life. If you are a millionaire or you have a much more complicated situation, I highly recommend that you get in touch directly with John Richardson. He's one of the absolute experts for Americans abroad and he'll set you straight whether it comes to renunciation or filing back taxes or any number of things. So John, do you want to hit us with just a quick, final message? I mean, all the links will be in the show notes where they can get in touch with you. But any... I'll give you the last word. Well, no, I think I'll just adopt your last word. Okay. Your last word was great. And, you know, let's connect again, we see how those think the grasses. Thanks very much, man. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for all your advocacy work and what you're doing on behalf of Americans abroad. It's very much needed. And so we appreciate all your hard work. This has been another episode of the My Latin Life podcast. Again, my guest today, John Richardson back again, links in the show note to kick attack with him. And by the way, to the listener, wherever you're listening to this, maybe it's Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, X, please be sure you're subscribed. Be sure to leave a review, drop a comment. Let us know you enjoyed the episode. And we dropped two episodes a week, so you won't want to miss any of our episodes with amazing guests. Thanks again, John. Thank you.
